America's Next Great Restaurant Episode 2 Recap

Previously on America's Next Great Restaurant, the judges whittled down the field to ten restaurant concepts, made jokes about balls, and failed to attract the attention of many people. Apparently, this is not America's Next Great Reality Television Food-Related Competition Show, because only 4.6 million people tuned in to watch the first episode. Nearly three times as many folks sat through the emotional pornography of ABC's Secret Millionaire.

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And so, NBC goes big this week, opting for one of those hilarious "judges and contestants react in front of a green screen to various flying things that we will add later" opening montages. They spell restaurateur incorrectly. I believe someone ducks a meatball or a flying arrow. I can feel another ten thousand viewers tuning in.

Bobby Flay explains to the contestants that they'll be going to the Seventh Circle of Hell, Universal Citywalk in California, to feed a thousand "very hungry, discerning customers." You know, because people who eat for free at a theme park are well known for being picky about what they spackle into their food hole before loading up on novelty T-shirts. But because no one on this show can actually cook, they've got to pick one of seventeen chefs who are standing in the kitchen, looking like shelter dogs with little cups of food in front of them. Chefs who do not find a forever home will be put down.

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Joey from Brooklyn enters the room and immediately bellows: "WHO IS PASSIONATE ABOUT ITALIAN FOOD AND LOVES GOODFELLAS!" thus reconfirming a stereotype. Marisa Fake Celine Dion seeks out the first Asian chef she can find to produce her Wok concept. Sudhir seems dismayed and surprised when he cannot find someone who can cook "Southern Coastal Indian Cuisine" so he ends up picking a Swedish guy, perhaps hoping to create Marcus Samuelsson. "He made a chicken stew that tasted closest to India" says a desperate Sudhir, noting, "I have to pick one of them."

Taco Alex, who reminds us repeatedly that he is from Los Angeles as if that were a good thing, has his eye on Narissa, one of Gordon Ramsey's cooks. "Gordon Ramsey wouldn't have Marisa as one of his go-to chefs if she wasn't extremely talented," notes Taco Alex. Uh, has he ever seen an episode of Hell's Kitchen? The one where Ramsey performs psyops on anyone bold enough to think they know how to operate a spoon? Working for Ramsey probably gives you a case of PTSD that makes the The Hurt Locker look like an episode of Thomas the Train Engine.

After making awkward chit-chat with the potential chefs, the contestants must pick one. Only there's no magic sorting hat. They just have to ... talk it out. Looks like we've got a pair of conflicts brewing. One is between Joey from Brooklyn and the BBQ Small Plate Twins, both of whom want Brandon, who looks like Beaker from the Muppets, only left out in the sun without water or shade for a few weeks. The other is between Championship Fran, who started exactly one game for the 1997 WNBA Champion Houston Comets basketball team, and Taco Alex. They both want Narissa Brought to You By Gordon Ramsey.

Everyone bickers passive-aggressively until they drag the disputed chefs back into the room and tell them to choose between mommy and daddy. Sunburned Beaker picks the BBQ Twins, prompting Joey to say, "that's perfectly fine, man" in a flat monotone that indicates it may not be as perfectly fine as he would suggest. Narissa doesn't buy into Champion Fran's pitch to have her make "over a hundred thousand different wraps," thus reducing her budding culinary career into a series of folds and toppings. She chooses Taco Alex.

And now the contestants must design a logo. Once again, Joey from Brooklyn enters the room and yells, "WHO LOVES THEIR GRANDMAAA?" Perhaps this is a tactic Joey uses throughout his life. Maybe he walks into H&R Block and yells, "WHO LIKES IT WHEN SOMEONE DOESN'T HAVE A SINGLE RECEIPT SAVED?" Maybe this works for him. One designer leaps up excitedly and loudly proclaims she loves her grandma. Huh. It works. Maybe President Obama should do this in Congress.

There is an awful lot of talking and not doing on this show. Eric Meltworks has a logo and doesn't need any help. Jamawn from Detroit is a football player and can only think of football player-y things, so he wants a logo that looks like it was created using PowerPoint by a five-year-old. It is a blue football on a green "field" with some words. I'm truly disappointed that Comic Sans wasn't involved. Really would have tied it all together.

Midway through the segment, it becomes immediately clear that either all of these graphic designers are from some kind of prison work-release program or are part of a usability testing program for Adobe's new line of products. The contestants are oblivious, with a hyped-up Championship Fran yelling, "I'm not feeling like the green is as fresh as romaine lettuce!"

After last week's crushing revelation that she "liked but didn't love" her job, Stephenie Compleat tells the world that she became a lawyer out of "embarrassment." Apparently, she came home from the Peace Corps, got accepted into Harvard Law School, and didn't have the heart to tell people that she wasn't sure yet. So she did the only thing she could. Which is attend two years of law school, pass the bar, and get a nice job in one of the worst economies in American history. She's sweet, but it's totally fair to hate Stephenie for this.

Taco Alex refuses to change his self-designed logo, which looks like it was produced by the "Ed Hardy Tumblr Theme." Joey the Living Stereotype wants a drawing of his grandmother next to the words, "Saucy Balls." Taco Alex, who is a jerk but nonetheless has eyeballs and uses them, thinks his competitor's concepts are lame and notes that "a child could have done that."

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Everyone goes shopping for groceries and begins supervising the cooking, which gives the editors a chance to blend heartfelt stories and cooking decisions. Short-Haired Sandy feels bad that she sold her momma's fast-food restaurant and says "it's like an ice cream cone filled with meat." Meanwhile, Championship Fran's mom had a heart attack and died when she was sixteen, but her cook would prefer to cook the meat in the kitchen, instead of on a sidewalk in an amusement park.

For the first time in fifteen minutes, Bobby Flay appears on the TV show. The BBQ Twins are making "bacon bourbon soaked beef links" and a "signature" tater tot casserole. Lorena says roughly forty two thousand words in seven seconds, emitting a thickly-accented frequency that ends with the phrase "make it hoppen."

Like one of those high school jock bullies with the clueless yet adorable foreign exchange student, Bobby calls Sudhir "Suds." The newly-christened Suds seems confused.

Eric Meltworks is going to do an Italian-based grilled cheese with tomato soup. Once again, both judges react as if Eric just said he was going to serve monkey brains on Cheez Doodles. They remind him how hard it is to cook grilled cheese, warning of the horrors of non-meltiness and greasy fingers. I'm gonna call it now. This guy wins the whole thing. The judges are busting his balls way too much.

And now we're at Citywalk, also known as the surface of the sun. The producers have either made a brilliant decision to deprive the contestants of sunblock or didn't white-balance the camera, because everyone appears to have sun poisoning. A red-faced Short-Haired Sandi screams, "Heaven and hell will collide today!" And I'm all, "No, I'm drinking your milkshake," because neither of these things makes any sense in the larger context of what is happening on the show.

Bobby and Curtis enjoy some Saucy Balls and hop over to Limbo where heaven and hell are evidently colliding in the form of two bland pulled meat sandwiches. Nearby, one of the diners says the meat was tough and to prove it, begins to chew like a Chipmunk with a tin of Skoal.

Steve Ells (of Chipotle fame) and Lorena have no idea what "The Tiffin Box," the name of Sudhir's concept, actually is. Also his food sucks, prompting both Sunburned Beaker and Sudhir to question some recent decisions. At Hick's, home of the BBQ Twins, Steve reveals that he did not enjoy eating soggy fried potatoes and meat wrapped in meat while standing in nine-thousand-degree heat. Fair point.

He does, however, enjoy Meltworks's Italian grilled cheese with tomato bisque, but not the logo, noting that he wants it to connect with the food more. But you know what does connect with food? A hand-drawn font using the letters C-H-I-P-O-T-L-E. They reserve similar ire for Taco Alex's super-douchey logo, prompting the aggrieved Los Angelino to say Steve and Lorena "were not cool enough to know that's a cool logo."

After eating fried tater tots, bacon-cheeseburger tacos, and Indian food, both Steve and Lorena looooove Stephenie Compleat's pulled pork salad and cold gazpacho. But because her logo-designed-by-inmates was boring and Stephenie is kinda boring, too, Lorena whips off her sunglasses and cuts an intense Ultimate Warrior-style promo about being passionate on Stephanie. Then she shakes the ropes, flexes a few times, and sprints away. Stephenie shits her pants.

At Fake Celine's stir-fry concept, Wok, she serves a bowl of rice, prompting Curtis — who is actually behaving as if he stands to lose a ton of money investing in one of these people — to re-explain how to participate in the show. He reveals that if she's got a stir-fry concept, it would be really helpful to serve stir fry, not just the idea of stir fry. But, she has a nice logo.

Elsewhere, Curtis and Bobby talk to Championship Fran, who says that she has done the research and there's no other wrap store. Bobby says, incredulously, "Really?" Perhaps he is shocked that Championship Fran has failed to note one of her judges is the founder of Chipotle, which sells the Mexican wrap known as the burrito. Bobby also says that the wrap was not that flavorful. Championship Fran argues that it's Bobby's fault his taste buds don't like dry chicken and bland "health sauce." She has a ring! (Unsaid: And a life-time scoring average of 4.1 points a game!)

Finally, Jamawn from Detroit, who has a chicken-and-waffles concept called W3, has decided to serve ... gumbo. Curtis and Bobby love it, prompting Curtis to say he's more impressed with the gumbo than the chicken and waffles, which is ... a good thing?

And it's judging time! In the worst set design ever filmed on television, the contestants stand in a semicircle roughly 500 yards away from the judges and are obscured by support beams. (Perhaps the Adobe product testers had input on this one as well.) In a refreshing change of pace, the judges immediately tell us that Eric Meltworks wins for a grilled cheese concept that will never win ever so why is he even trying just go home now to your pregnant wife Jesus stop wasting our time.

They'd like to talk to some people, however, but never reveal who is safe and who is not, so you just kinda ... watch the show and keep track with your scorecard at home. Ultimately, the three worst this week are revealed to be The BBQ Twins, Fake Celene's Wok, and Championship Fran. Everyone else is safe and presumably happy, but we don't see that. We do see...

Steve telling Championship Fran the chicken was dry. Championship Fran replies that different people like different things. Curtis doesn't like the fact that he's about lose his shirt investing in her overcooked chicken. Championship Fran, who must have attended the Hosni Mubarak school of responding to criticism, says she heard the chicken was "dry," not "overcooked." I wish Lorena had gorilla-pressed Fran and then done a pose-down. That would have been an acceptable response.

After destroying the gastrointestinal tract of the four judges with soul-sucking fried swill, the BBQ Twins readily admit their flaws and say they mean well. Fake Celine sings a stirring rendition of "My Heart Will Go On" and says there's nothing like her "stir fry concept that doesn't serve stir fry" out there.

All three trudge back in, walking past the support pillars, which are yet again in the way. In a massive understatement, Bobby tells Championship Fran that she gave their criticism "some resistance." And, suddenly, it's over. Fran hears the dreaded catchphrase of doom: "I'm sorry we will not be investing in your restaurant."

Championship Fran, who already hosts a show called Home Rules on HGTV, gives a little exit speech to the cameras. She says this is hard to believe and if she was a scrub she would be happy to just be here but she's not a scrub. Furthermore, she has thought about this concept forever, which is kinda terrifying since she missed the billion other stores that are selling wraps out there. But she needs to deal with the fact that she's not still playing.

And I need to deal with the fact that more people might end up reading this recap of the show than the actual show itself.